Jeff and I have just finished the work on getting the Nightmare Fuel Foundry VTT module ready. As part of that, issues came up with compatibility with the original Nordlond Bestiary module and a few other fixes...so do make sure that you have the most recent versions of all the bits: Foundry VTT, the GURPS Game Aid engine, and of course the modules themselves.

As part of this final distribution for content in this project, you will receive a license key distribution, plus a copy of the Read Me installation instructions, which are duplicated below in the backer-only section of the update body.

That really should put the final bow on this campaign!

I'm pleased to report that the hiccups for the UK-hub mailings seem to have been resolved. Of the orders, 22 have gone out ("despatched"), another 6 have been "presented to carrier," which ... I'm not entirely sure what that means, and the final 2 have been "picked" and will presumably move into presentation and despatch Real Soon Now. 

For the AUS/NZ contingent, Wayne sent out all of the orders in the post three days ago. 

So...that's pretty much all of it.

The last two packages from my home - one to the US and one to Canada, both awaiting DF Companion 3 - are going into the mail today.

The stock was FINALLY booked in at GamesQuest UK; I anticipate them going out soon, hopefully sometime this week. I've been haranguing my contact to get this in promptly for a bit, but now all the stock is in their system to execute.

I think the AUS/NZ books are still on their way to staging...but they ARE on their way.

The package for international fulfillment has been delivered at GamesQuest; they've not entered it into their inventory system though, which seems a perpetual problem with a facility as busy as they are. I also got the plus-up of 5 copies of Garden of Evil that were missing from the first printing, and those are there too. Again same deal on "why aren't they reflected in inventory."

The EU laws changed again this year so I have to execute a legal agreement with GQ to allow them to collect VAT on my behalf blah blah this is why folks stop doing international shipments blah. I've send back a few notes on their proposed contract, mostly because their response to me is so slow at times that if there ever is a question on fees, I'm not convinced they'll answer it before my "must pay by..." countdown clock expires. 

AUS/NZ packages are still on the way.

I'm expecting a two-book order of DF Companion 3 to take care of a pair of stragglers in the USA.

I've been quiet about this because Nick, Nose, and Neck are doing this because they love it. I'm not qualified and they're super good at it.

But Nick just sent me a demo card for the Amphisbaena from Serpents of Legend, showing off the new token and art (top right), the upper/lower borders, and the snakey bullet points as a graphical embellishment.

We'll need to go through the proofing and module creation/submission with Foundry, but I'm hopeful that the VTT should be available in a few weeks; certainly "before February ends" seems reasonable.

That's pretty much it for now...

As of this morning, all packages but two have been sent from their origin out of the house. Those last two are waiting on copies of Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3 to be delivered to me so I can take care of them.

All Domestic packages (save for the one above) hit the mail last night, which means tracking numbers should start reflecting "moving to destination."

All international packages have labels. Most have left my house, and a few rogue packages to Canada are picked, packed, labeled, and will hit USPS before noon today.

The UK-Hub stuff is on the way or in place at GamesQuest. The books had a copy shortage for Garden of Evil, but MixamUK instantly said "my bad" and printed out the excess, to be delivered to GQ as soon as they're done. GQ also arranged a DHL pickup for the items (mostly card decks) that had to come from here. I expect those to move quickly; airmail is like that.

The Australia/New Zealand books should be on their way to my contact in Australia; they arrived at the forwarder and I have paid the freight, so off they go.

So there are maybe 40 packages total that are pending, and all but two of those are moving to completion one way or another.

The original schedule said Print Fulfillment Begins in Feb-March; looks to me like it's going to END in Feb-March, with all books on their way by Feb, and because international routes can take an arbitrary amount of time it seems, ending in Feb-March with them delivered. We hope.

Thanks for sticking with me through the process, and I hope you enjoy your stuff.

Oh, the original note forgot to mention the VTT Pack. Nick and Nose and Neck have all the data and are working on it. When it's ready, it'll go out, but I have not pushed them for schedule updates or "faster faster please" as they're doing this on their own time and whatever I might pay them isn't enough to buy priority. So that one will be ready when it's ready, and then poof, it'll go out.

An excellent question. I'm currently working on my 2023 plans, which already included editing a book on powerful magical items (artifact-class stuff) for Nordlond.

I have a bunch of Powered by GURPS stuff on my docket, the most important (and least complete, alas) is the full-on RPG Mission X: [subtitle TBD].  Driven by a modified Action engine, it's conceived as a mix of Stargate SG1, XCOM2, and a bit of Scalzi's Old Man's War as inspirations. While it may well wind up being a core of "just another bug hunt" plus "kill the foes and take their stuff...in spaaaaace!" it will hopefully also lay the ground for more. Expect "Delvers to Grow" style Character generation, and since this is a Powered by GURPS GAME, not an expansion, I can play around with some things - and fully intend to - to make the on-ramp and play experience smoother. I hope.

More later...for now, back to work for me!

Things are starting to wind down, with a whole bunch of packages winding their way to recipients in the US and Canada. Also the first step of the journey to AUS/NZ, which went to Wayne's freight forwarder and is probably in hand now.

What is missing was that some of the orders ran into a problem in that I sold out of two different books. One, Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3, was because I got a few pre-orders after I'd ordered the first batch of supplies from SJGames. New books have been ordered and I should receive them in a few weeks. This impacts precisely one order.

The other was I ran out of Shields Up, which was 100% my fault. However, I received notice today that the books' label has been printed, which usually means I'll have it in a week or less. There are about 30-35 orders pending this arrival, but with a bit of good fortune we'll see them on the way by the end of the weekend.

Mostly good news here. The UK-printed copies of the four newer books is in ShipQuest's hands...but for some reason instead of giving me 35 copies of Garden of Evil (on top of 31 orders) I got 30. I've sent a polite version of "WTF?" to Mixam and I expect to hear back from them shortly.

That takes care of something like half of the orders; I am arranging for a DHL pickup of the box with a few one-off copies of my books, plus the 16 card decks. I've found that having GQ import the books rather than me ship them to the vendor gets things off to the right foot.

I've asked GQ to start sending out the orders that they can fill from existing stock - maybe 14 of the 30 - but they seem to have a particularly regimented methodology at times, so I'm not sure they'll begin shipment until all the pieces are there. UK and EU orders will go tracked and (to the e

So we're getting closer to the end here, but it may still be a few weeks before the majority of what can be shipped off has been, plus the "must first get to Australia before the seven AUS/NZ books are reshipped."

Got the call. Snowpocalypse 2023 was averted, roads were slushy but fine, and the decks were done. So I drove over and got 'em.

I dropped off the replacement copies of Serpents of Legend with all 60 pages this time into the post office this afternoon.

So tomorrow I'll start picking and packing the domestic orders with cards. I'll see how many I can pack and then run those over to the USPS tomorrow. I will admit I expect to get all of the "just three books plus card deck" and "three bestiaries, shields up, and card decks" tomorrow, and that's fully 100 of 124 domestic orders. The last 25 are going to be the unique orders of which they're "pack this particular order, print label, print next order, print label."

But I don't see why I can't get all 124 of them into the mail by Saturday, really.

Then it's the Canadian orders (which get processed separately so I can account for duties), the box that goes to AUS/NZ, and finally the box of cards and other things that has to go to GamesQuest. In any case, instead of starting Monday, I'll likely finish.

So, yesterday I pinged both Mixam and Artiforge about progress. Today I received my answers, in two ways.

First, I heard from Artiforge, the card vendor. They told me that the cards were printed and cut (wow!), and were being bagged as we speak. Probably done today, but given snowpocalypse 2 might happen again here tonight, they recommended a Friday pickup.

That's excellent.

I also sent a note to Mixam for an update. They said they'd check with production and get back to me.

Imagine my surprise then when my Arlo video doorbell said "package detected" and I found fresh copies of Serpents of Legend on my porch, with all 60 pages this time!

So: final fulfillment begins this weekend. I shall aim to get everything in the mail Monday morning, I hope. There really aren't that many packages to get going.

I will also hope to hear back from GamesQuest UK about sending over the fewer-than-20 decks of cards and anything else I'm missing for the UK-hub orders.

So...coming down to the end, really this time.

I was contacted by a backer today, and then actually received a phone call from Mixam as I was submitting a problem report.

The call? From the production floor: "Um...we found 16 pages of your Serpents of Legend book on our floor."

Short version: every single copy of Serpents is defective. 

They're reprinting it correctly, free of charge, as we speak. They'll get it to me ASAP, and I told them that for most of my backers, if it takes two weeks to arrive (which is normal) it won't actually delay things, as I'm waiting on a 4x5" card-cutting die to be re-ordered by Artiforge.

About that: my files were accepted and I'm reviewing proofs now. I expect they'll be fine and then the cards will print and be ready. That looks like maybe three weeks and final fulfillment can begin worldwide.

Every one of the 60-or-so backers whose books are on the way will get a new copy of Serpents free of charge.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

So, bunch of small updates, all related to fulfillment. 

Thus far, between digital and physical fulfillment, Gaming Ballistic has completed 227 orders, with 174 remaining, and a single solitary lonesome survey uncompleted.

Of the 174 unfulfilled, 31 are out of the United Kingdom hub with physical rewards, another 7 are AUS/NZ with physical. 

The rest of the domestic fulfillment is basically "everyone who ordered the quick reference cards."

Back to those in a moment.

As of this morning, I placed the order at Mixam UK for 35 copies each of the primary three books, and another 28 or 30 or so for Shields Up. I am expecting those to arrive at GamesQuestUK in 9-10 days. 

Half of the 30 UK-Hub orders do not include cards. They will go out as soon as GQ-UK gets them tracked in, validates that they're not damaged (this has happened twice before), and processes the orders. 100% of the time, this takes longer than it should, but does get done.

There is a single order that also contains Hand of Asgard, Nordlondr Folk, and Delvers to Grow...printing a single book doesn't make sense, so I'll send those over along with the 18 decks of Quick-Reference cards.

I was holding off posting about this until I had more information. There was a staff kerfuffle at my card printer. Having now spoken to my new contact, it was all understandable and nothing nefarious. It did, however, mean that we lost the time over the holidays where I'd have liked to have been printing cards.

Artiforge was sensitive to the timeliness of my order, and so did a quick inventory of what would be needed to make the printing happen.

Notionally, all the cards could be printed in a single day, cut and packed in another day, assuming machine availability and all consumables on hand. Unfortunately, the 4" x 5" card die was damaged, so they need to order another one. They asked me if I could scale my stuff down to 3.5x5", which is a "no" because I think we all want them to be compatible with the old cards. Plus...way, way too much info on a GURPS card to make them smaller. 

So we'll have to wait. Likely 4-6 weeks before the die comes in. It's complicated by issues of quality and delivery; there's an overseas vendor whose dies are really top-notch, but Chinese New Year interferes with timing; the US vendor tends to wear out faster, but can arrive sooner. Artiforge is absorbing the cost of die replacement (as they should, since it's a "standard" die size), so the choice on what route to take is on them.

What we have decided to do is to get all the cards printed immediately. The vendor has my card files as of yesterday, and they'll inspect them and decide on the best packaging strategy. So the printing will be finished, and as soon as the die comes in and gets through Quality Control, they'll be cut and packed and I'll drive over to pick them up.

At that point, I'll box up the remaining domestic physical books and cards and get them out, as well as shipping 18-20 card decks to satisfy the UK hub. I will also need to ship books to Australia, as small-volume printing is very expensive at Mixam-AUS (Mixam-UK is almost always reasonable for quantities as low as 5 books).

So, a delay. I don't like it, but without a die-cutter, we can't make cards. 

Not exactly.

Here was the original schedule:

If we do get the cards in February, then all domestic packages will be in hand by March, easily.
It will take time to get the packages of cards to the Australia reshipper and the UK GamesQuest site. A few weeks each. That still means most folks will have their orders by March, but I do expect a few stragglers.

I'm sorry about that; I was really thinking we'd have it all wrapped by before the end of January.

My authors were asking at what point the books were going to go on sale. I don't like putting things out there before backers get them - that's why you backed, to make it happen and get it first.

But everyone has their digital copies, and has for a while. I'd like to throw those up on my web store through January, and then list them on W23 and DriveThru in February.

Physical won't happen until every package is in the mail, though. Same rationale. Y'all get it first.

Sorry for the lengthy update, but I wanted to be complete. As schedules firm up (maybe we get the die sooner? In these days later is usually the better bet, but we can hope) I'll update Team Nightmare.

I am the proud recipient of these wonderful finished books. 

Also received the DFRPG Companion volumes.

I am still waiting to hear back from my card vendor, Artiforge. My contact changed (old one left) and the new one has yet to return my emails. I'm hoping tomorrow, but it will be when it will be. 

Until then, I will get things moving on the books-only packages, as well as putting the UK and/or AUS printing into motion.

It's been quiet above the waterline but still working below it.

I received notification today that the first two books (Garden of Evil and the Bugstiary) have been given shipping labels. We're in blizzard mode here in MN and surrounds, but usually once I get the notice I get the books within the week (7 days). I expect to hear back on the final book, the longest, Serpents of Legend soon, and even when I placed the order it was slid to the right by a few days. Ultimately, I hope to see all the books in-hand by next week.

The next step is the cards - my contact at my card printer left the company and I'm expecting to reach out to my new one today, his first day back at the office. So that may take a bit to organize and then get going. These are small runs (175 decks of cards), so once it goes, it goes fast. Additionally, no time shall be lost to shipping, because I can drive to the factory and pick them up.

Lastly, I am working with Nick and Neck and Nose to get the foundry VTT content ready. The cards and tokens have been generated and at this point it's really just finalizing. So that soon as well.

Once I figure out what's going to be happening with the cards (hopefully by day's end), I'll be able to start sorting the physical orders for the international backers as well. These are more complicated due to the card and "stuff" items not being properly restricted by the Backerkit interface, and my deciding to roll with it anyway. I'll have an update for international physical backers by the end of the week.

At this point, all the product but the VTT packages should be in your hands. I pushed Garden of Evil and Bugstiary QR card PDFs just now.

Next step is to contact my card printer and see if they're even going to be open from tomorrow through after the New Year. We're having a wee bit of a blizzard  here inn the Twin Cities at the moment, so contact may be erratic.

In any case...I probably won't have too much to say between now and the New Year. So keep yours safe and happy!

I just uploaded and pushed digital files for the first of three Quick-Reference card packs.

I'll be uploading the other two in the next day or so; like many, I'm entering into the Time of Great Family Omnipresence and will be multitasking for the coming week.

Even so, the first of three is available to you, and if you find errors, please use relevant BOOK, citing the disparity between book and cards on the book page as needed. Hopefully it's not needed. I mean, something always slips through. But hopefully not much.

The QR cards do not include every jot and tiddle of information; they're designed to remind the GM of needed stats so that page flipping is minimized. But to get everything on the card would require, well, the entire book. Even so, some require two cards. Dulsa Thoom, cult leader, needed four. Thou shalt not mess with totally not James Earl Jones.

So...hopefully the other two will follow shortly, as quickly as I can. I'm also using the time as a way of getting the right information into the VTT sheets, so those are being worked as well.

Well, there we go. Cartoon covers are uploaded. 

Thanks for all who made errata reports.

The three books have been updated and uploaded. They also have been sent to the printer for the US-hub versions.

I expect to receive them on or before Jan 14.

I'm currently working on the last of the three card deck PDF files. Once Serpents is done, I'll get a full deck uploaded and sent out, then after a short grace period to allow any issues to be spotted, I'll get THOSE into physical production.

That is really everything that needs manufacturing; I've ordered what needs ordering otherwise, I believe. Some of it (Boxed Sets, Monsters 2) is already here. The DF Companion volumes are pending I believe.

The VTT comes last, but it'll come.

This afternoon I pulled the trigger on releasing the Bugstiary PDF.

My intent is to let you guys read all three for the coming week, letting you make comments, ask any questions, and point out any errata the proofing team missed.

I hope to collect all mistakes, fix, and order the print copies on Dec 16; arrival would likely be the first week of the New Year.

In the meantime, I'll get crackin' on the cards and VTT entries. Getting that into printable state will hopefully only take the week as well, and I'd place the print order shortly thereafter; it's a small order maybe 175 decks total, so hopefully before the end of January, maybe significantly before.

By then I'm reasonably sure I'll also have the print versions of the companions; I already have all the Boxed Sets and Monsters 2 hardcopies I need.

So stay tuned, and I'll get to a hard date for fulfillment start when I  have more info!

Oh, one more thing: Once all the errors come in, and the manuscript is completely final, I will push the "special cartoon cover" freebies out to everyone, and simultaneously release one final version of each of the three books, consolidating the mess that is the current layer structure into the minimum required for utility. The layers will allow the PDF to turn OFF the light-colored background and the art in order to save ink if you print it yourself. Layer structure is likely something like:

I think that'll do it.

A finished version of Serpents of Legend has been published and sent via Backerkit Digital Downloads to all supporters!

As part of finishing this book, we added more playtesters to Garden of Evil, as well as a substantial fix/rewrite to the section on climbing on large monsters, which was updated when we took a harder look at the existing rules plus others for Serpents of Legend.

I expect to have the Bugstiary in hand by ... the end of the weekend if things go to plan. But I wasn't expecting a two-day internet outage either, so as always, Life Happens.

Once all three books are in your hands, I will do several things:

As always...

As always, Gaming Ballistic encourages and welcomes feedback on any mistakes that you see, so I can correct them before the book(s) go to print. PDFs can of course be adjusted at any time...but having errors in the print copy is irksome.

So if you see something that needs fixing, please head on over to https://gamingballistic.com/errata and submit a report.

Gaming Ballistic Errata Page

Things that are definitely errata?

The borderline one is "clarity," where something is presented in a way that may be confusing. Another good one is "I'd really like a pointer to the page in [Book title] where the rule is. That one I can usually try and fit in if layout isn't too tight.

Things that are not errors, though:

The first one there is simply a line-level decision: The Dungeon Fantasy RPG doesn't really do points for monsters, a decision of SJGames which I wholeheartedly endorse. So that's not an error.

FDG came in every reprinted box set and is a core part of the GB rules corpus. So that's not up for debate either.

The last two are both a result of the fact that the Dungeon Fantasy RPG isn't 100% GURPS, and any rules citations or interpretations must come from the Boxed Set. I've gotten "this is wrong" from surprising quarters too. Also, since this is a monsters book: if you're going to yell at me about how a trait works...check Monsters first! Sometimes, things are different there for critters, especially for monster-specific traits.

There are doubtless things I will tweak...but having the covers nearly done (I need updated art and some text on Bugs back cover, and a check-over for back-cover text, ISBNs, etc for the other two) means as soon as the guts are ready, they can get to you guys.

I also made good progress on Serpents' interior even since this morning when I posted the update. I now only have to do Dulsa Thoom, Snake-Cult leader, and then we'll have a final page count and can start the detail edit, which will take a heck of a lot less time than the layout.

This is a backer-only update!

Oops. Forgot to go back and add the scale silhouette on the monster illustrations. I'll do this and get another version out this week.

I had family with me from last Wednesday until this morning: I didn't get everything I wanted to done.

Nonetheless, I did get some things done, and shall be moving forward with charging cards soon.

There are a few oddities this time which prevent me from just charging forward willy-nilly, but my plan is to work through those one way or another, and deal with the rest by exception.

Cryptic? Maybe. Short version is I'm going to cycle through charging cards and as soon as that happens some of the files will be available for immediate download. Including Garden of Evil.

I'm in the final stages of proofing the Bugstiary, plus there's some rework on the cover that's happening by the end of this week. I'm also going full-on at Serpents of Legend, and that one has a finished cover, as I believe you've seen.

Pre-orders will stay open until I place the physical orders for the product(s).

One bit of unfortunate news is that there aren't enough orders to provide print versions of the alternate covers. Backers will still get PDFs of them, for fun, but I'll assemble those LAST, after all of the "real" work is complete.

The post-campaign orders for the three books of the Nightmare Fuel crowdfunding campaign has begun!

Serpents of Legend is going to wind up at least 48 pages. Maybe more.

Garden of Evil stayed at 20 pages, but is pretty close to complete.

I'm not quite ready to show the Bugstiary cover yet - I'm still working on the graphic design - but it has grown to 48 pages and the art is just gorgeous.

...my art team. Because they're making me look good. Or at least better. I don't know if I could ever look good.

Serpents of Legend now has a cover.

This is simply top-notch work by Douglas Deri, who's new to my team but hopefully he's enjoyed the experience enough to return.

Much of his work for this commission was for the serpents book, as I try and assign artists the same interior pieces that feature on teh cover, for consistency. But he also did what were originally called Clinging Vines and are now called Strangleweed, mostly because I needed to move a monster from A to B because of facing-page issues on layout, but also strangleweed just sounds cooler.

So the Serpents cover joins Garden of Evil in the "all I need is the back cover text" category.

I hope that those of you who are traveling (or have traveled) for the US Thanksgiving Day holiday do so safely and avoid tryptophan coma. I should have the third cover ready to go sometime next week.

As we head into Turkey Day week, with family already starting to arrive, distractions multiplying, and yet nearly 90% of surveys already complete, I wanted to give a quick update on a few items.

On Friday, I will open up the campaign for Pre-Orders. The backers have had their shot at some of the add-ons with limited inventory remaining, and most of them have completed their surveys.

Pre-orders will remain open until fulfillment begins. 

It's still missing a bar code, as well as a limited amount of teaser text on the back. Everything else is finalized.

I am a huge fan of Little Shop of Horrors, having seen both the movie and the play, and I think Brendan did a marvelous job of capturing totally not Audrey Too, Seymour, and Audrey in a Viking-style rendition of those characters.

The front features the devil-blossom, and both plant and the captured mage have stats in the book.

Brendan put a lot of detail into both pieces, and I really appreciate his hard work and diligence.

I'm expecting the other two covers to be finalized in the next few days, and I'll update you when they're in.

The smoke test went very well, and with 85% of participants reporting no issues, I pushed out the full survey list to the remaining backers.

(The other 15% haven't responded yet. It wasn't 15% report issues. That would not be something that made me say "woo hoo, let's do them all!)

In any case, the surveys are out - please fill them out ASAP.

I'm going to pause for a short bit to ensure everything is still fine, and then I'll open up the pre-order store. I will probably fire this off this coming Tuesday.

By limited but popular request, the "alternate" covers for the three books - which other than Garden of Evil are all you've ever seen - are also available as an add-on. The US hub requires 20 folks to order each one; the UK hub requires 15 (due to pricing/shipping differences). If we get enough orders by the time Lock and Charge happens, those that order them will be charged for them and they'll be printed and included in the box.

Because sometimes electrons really are free, though, those alternate covers will be included for anyone who gets the PDFs as a freebie. So only plus-up for the cartoons if you really want extra physical books.

You've already seen the Garden of Evil cover front, but by Monday I should ("should") have all three full cover spreads, front and back.

I'll post them as soon as I have layout done, which should not take terribly long.

This is tied to the first book being done-enough for release, but I anticipate getting all of my art in hand by this coming Monday, Nov 21. I'm going to give the surveys about a week, and then start locking and charging cards on a rolling basis. This means as you complete the survey, you'll get any PDFs of books that are done right away. Once about 85-90% of the surveys are finished, I should be able to judge how many print orders I need - or really just "do I need more than about 250 of them?" which would be triggered by a surge in pre-orders.

If you see something that makes you scratch your head, just ping me. These post-campaign surveys have a lot of moving parts, and it's more likely accident than malice if you see an odd price disparity or something is missing or wrong. If it is, we'll fix it.

One common error is mis-clicking SKUs on my part, so a pledge level winds up with (say) 2× Garden of Evil (PDF), 1× Serpents of Legend, and no Bugstiaries. That's an easy fix, and I DID check for it, but keep a weather eye on your shopping cart anyway. 

So roughly 5% of backers will get their surveys shortly (only 20 people). If things go smoothly, I'll push the surveys to everyone. I usually wait about 24 hours to see if things work properly or I see anything unexpected.

Stay tuned!

I got a few things straightened out with Backerkit, and went through the ridiculously tedious process of getting things set up. 

So I submitted for setup review, which may take a few days. Once that happens, I'll fire off the smoke test.

Once that's ready to go, I'll send out a new update about what's available and where, the "cute" cover options, and more.

Just a quick update, and sorry for the relatively long period of silence.

First up: I usually get surveys out faster than this, but when I set down to get all of this done on the 11th, my pledge levels didn't import properly, which potentially meant backers would not get credited appropriately for pledges. That obviously would not do; Backerkit had Veteran's Day off, so I had to wait until today to get that resolved. Which it has been.

So now I need to get the few pledge questions I will ask in place, make sure all of the Add-ons and Pledge SKUs are accurate, and then get surveys out.

I am NOT doing "Charge Shipping Later" as I had intended to. I am currently in the middle of fulfilling my Old-School Essentials project, and that gave me enough "intel" to properly assign shipping levels with confidence. Since I have sample books at the page count of everything I'm shipping, I can get actual package weights, even an approximate for cards. 

There will likely be ONE bit of weirdness in the USA, which is that I'm going to start by charging Parcel Select Ground rates for postage, and then right before we're done, look for anyone who is "books-only" and credit back some money to account for a roughly $3-5 difference in expected postage rates from USPS Parcel Select Ground to Media Mail. More on that later, but I expect the "starting" USPS rate to be about $12, or $8 for books-only. The lightest package (the three basic Bestiary books) in a book-wrap mailer will be in the 2-lb category.

More on shipping for everyone else in a bit, once everything is properly imported.

I can report that the core layout, including all but about 5 pieces of art, are finished for Garden of Evil.

I've finished editing and layout for the introduction to the Bugstiary, and now am going through each of the monsters and getting layout and editing in place. First I'm doing the ones that fit on a single page easily; then I'll need to decide on the ones with enough information to flow onto multipage spreads. Then finally, the ant-folk and the beetle-folk get their own heavy look, as they're legit civilizations that require more than just "here's a bag of hit points to kill." Heck, the beetle-folk are presented as a playable character option.

Then lastly Serpents of Legend, the longest book and the one that requires a bit more careful hewing to get all the author's intent on the page in an efficient manner. 

And the art continues to come in marvelously.

So that's it for now, and I'm going to go head-down for a bit to Get Stuff Done™, and hopefully the next you hear from me will be the smoke test going out, probably later this week. After a day of that, all the surveys go out, and as folks fill them out, I'll give a few days and then start charging, which will let me post up any PDFs you get that already exist. We'll do this in a bit of a rolling fashion until all the PDFs of the new things are also complete, then we'll give feedback time, and I'll close up, charge cards for shipping, and order any needed physical copies.

Of course, this is November and  December, which are pretty holiday-laden here in the US...and Turkey Day is at my home this year. So I better work quick!